'Uncharted Territory:' Heat Record Falls Again

Stop us if you've heard this before: Thursday was the hottest day on record for planet Earth, reports CNN. That now marks four straight days in which the all-time high was either tied or broken, and it makes July 3-6 the hottest four-day stretch on the books, notes Axios.

• The record: The average temperature of Earth hit 63.01 degrees Fahrenheit (17.23 degree Celsius) on Thursday, according to the University of Maine's Climate Reanalyzer, which crunches data from the US National Centers for Environmental Prediction. The record fell on Monday, then again on Tuesday, stayed put on Wednesday, and fell for a third time on Thursday.

• All over: As the AP notes, the record-high average "includes places that are sweltering under dangerous heat—like Jingxing, China, which checked in almost 110 degrees Fahrenheit—and the merely unusually warm, like Antarctica, where temperatures across much of the continent were as much as 8 degrees Fahrenheit above normal this week." Raging wildfires in Canada aren't helping, either.
• Pattern: The Washington Post notes that all kind of record-setting heat has been recorded in recent months, setting 2023 on track to be the hottest on record. This year's El Nino is clearly a factor, but records are falling well ahead of its peak impact, suggesting deeper climate change issues (think greenhouse gases) are at play. "We have never seen anything like this before," said Carlo Buontempo of Europe's Copernicus Climate Change Service. "We are in uncharted territory."
• A warning: An analysis of all of the above at Vox has a not-so-pleasant warning for those not enjoying the summer bake. "In the years to come, heat waves like those in the American South and Europe are likely to get worse on the whole, not better," writes Benji Jones. "So while this summer might be unbearably hot, it's likely to be one of the coolest summers for decades to come."

(More climate change stories.)